Driver cd

Composed during the 1980s and 1990s, Ligeti’s Études have already become modern classics, absorbing the attention of pianists, composers and contemporary-music audiences worldwide. They are as feared for the uncompromising severity and intransigence of their technical demands as they are celebrated for their musical ingenuity, striking originality, range and variety of feeling, accessibility to a wide listenership, and astonishing diversity of musical and non-musical inspirations and resonances.

Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series reaches its 70th album with this program of three concertos by women. The ongoing success of the series suggests that audiences are ready and waiting for wider repertoire, and pianist Danny Driver and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Rebecca Miller deliver a real find here. The Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Op. 45, of American composer Amy Beach has been performed and recorded, but it's been in search of a recording that captures the autobiographical quality of the work, well sketched out in the booklet notes by Nigel Simeone. Essentially, Beach faced creative repression from her religious mother and to a lesser extent from her husband, who allowed her to compose, but only rarely to perform. These experiences, it may be said, poured out in this towering Brahmsian, four-movement piano concerto, which sets up an unusual quality of struggle between soloists and orchestra. It's this dynamic that's so well captured by Driver and Miller (who happen to be married to each other). Sample the opening movement, which has lacked this quality in earlier performances.

CPE Bach (second son of JSB) offers so much more than eccentricity and in this recital of five sonatas Danny Driver, a recent addition to Hyperion’s bejewelled roster of pianists, makes his superlative case for music that is as inventive as it is unsettling. Playing with imperturbable authority, he captures all of the mercurial fits and starts of the G minor Sonata (H47) – almost as if Bach were unable to decide on his direction. And here, in particular, you sense Haydn’s delight rather than censure in such a startling and adventurous journey. The strange, gawky nature of the third movement even anticipates Schumann’s wilder dreams and, dare I say it, is like a prophecy of Marc-André Hamelin’s trickery in his wicked take on Scarlatti (also on Hyperion, 12/01). Again, the beguiling solace of the central Adagio is enlivened with sufficient forward-looking dissonance to take it somehow out of time and place. In the Adagio of the A major Sonata (H29) gaiety quickly collapses into a Feste-like melancholy, though even Shakespeare’s clown hardly sings more disquietingly of life’s difficulties. The finale from the same Sonata has a mischievous feline delicacy; and if the last three sonatas on this recital are more conventional, they are still subject to all of Bach’s mood-swings

Frontiers Music Srl is pleased to announce the release of Cross Country Driver's "The New Truth". Written and performed by Rob Lamothe (Riverdogs), James Harper (Fighting Friday), and Zander Lamothe (Logan Staats Band), "The New Truth" is an old-school-rock rollercoaster of an album. This gutsy, continent-and-generation-spanning musical adventure features inspired performances not only from the aforementioned trio at the core of Cross Country Driver, but by friends such as Mike Mangini (Dream Theater), Greg Chaisson (Badlands), dUg Pinnick (King's X), Rhonda Smith (Jeff Beck), Jimmy Wallace (The Wallflowers), KFigg (Extreme) and more…

Erik Chisholm is a Scottish-born composer and friend of Bartók whose music has experienced a substantial revival. It's not quite correct to call him a Scottish composer, for the last two decades of his life were spent outside Scotland (mostly in South Africa), and Scottish nationalism is only one of the unique mix of influences in his music. It's not that he's "eclectic" in the modern sense.

Best remembered for their 1978 hit "Driver's Seat," London-based new wave combo Sniff 'n' the Tears emerged from the remnants of the little-known Ashes of Moon, which disbanded in 1974 after failing to stir up much label interest…

On this album Danny Driver brings his impeccable pianism, consummate style and imagination to Schumann's Novelletten and Nachtstucke, less wellknown sets from his extraordinary output for the piano. Schumann wrote Nachtstucke upon the death of his brother, and would have entitled it Corpse Fantasia were it not for Clara's intervention. The eight pieces of the Novelletten form what is at once the largest and the least known among Schumann's major piano cycles.